Pirates, privateers, and profits

"Probably the most important privateering center of the era in North America, and possibly of the British Empire, bustling Colonial New York serves as a microcosm for this scholarly study of the decline of piracy and the enforcement of legality in privateering. … In the 1690s, the city of New York was a flourishing pirate center. By the mid-[18th-]century, however, only a few of its privateersmen drifted into the dangerous practices of the earlier period. Pirates gave way before governmental control or retired or died. … History and politics play important roles in this economic examination of the port. Legal aspects of the maritime depredation are thoroughly treated, as pirates and privateersmen elbow merchants and government officials in their quest for loot." -- Book jacket.